Lighting the Darkness
by pagerunner
Summary: When the journey before you seems impossible, when your surroundings seem too daunting, sometimes you have to find your own comforts... or create them, in one way or another. Set early in Origins, with Alistair just coming to know his fellow Warden.


When Alistair went looking for his companion that night in Orzammar, he found her past the edge of camp, staring into the darkened reaches of the caverns and sketching out glittering patterns with her fingertips.

He couldn't make out the purpose at first. He only recognized the magic at work, the feel of it, the veritable _smell_ of it as it crackled through the stale air. His skin prickled, and old reflexes made him go tense at the sight. _Magic,_ whispered his memory, in a voice reminiscent of the brothers who'd trained him, drilled him in the templars' idea of sin. _Profligate use of power, to no practical use - just the sort of thing that invites chaos…._

He paused, and saw the way her fingers were trembling as they traced their inscrutable designs. With an even greater effort of will than it would have taken to extinguish her spell, he shut the voices up.

His fellow Warden, this Amell girl who'd come from Maker knew what trouble in the Tower, was still something of a mystery to him. They'd barely come to know each other before the disaster at Ostagar, and since then she'd been driven, but a little distant: doubly shaken, he supposed. He couldn't blame her. And getting cozy with a templar - or an almost-templar, anyway - wouldn't exactly have been her first instinct, either, as much as he regretted it.

Now, though, they were all that was left. And since they were truly stuck together, he felt he _had_ to get to know her, or this was going to be an unbearable journey. This…caution of theirs, being half afraid to talk to each other, had to stop. All he knew for certain was that she hadn't turned out to be the horror his old teachers had warned him about. For one thing, they were surrounded by enough lyrium down here that it made his teeth itch, but she hadn't even _begun_ to abuse her powers. She'd kept her magic well under wraps, in fact, far more so than Morrigan had - and Morrigan was a problem Alistair did _not_ feel up to facing just now. She was asleep, anyway, or so he hoped. Not that he'd put it past her to turn into some horrid creature and sneak away in the dead of night, or whatever time it actually was down here.

Amell, though… Amell he wanted to understand. He wanted to talk to her properly for once. He even, he realized, wanted to understand her magic, especially the smaller, stranger things like… this.

Whatever this was.

It wasn't any sort of battle spell she was casting. He'd watched her take down enough darkspawn already to know what she was capable of. This wasn't anything he'd ever seen before, in fact, and he'd seen plenty. Alistair winced at an old memory of templar training, where a young mage had been brought in for… target practice, really, and asked to cast spell after spell while Alistair and his fellow trainees tried to extinguish each one. The poor man had run through dozens of spells, most of them not even hostile, before Arric's final smite had left him senseless on the cold granite floor. Alistair was nearly sick afterward. Some of the spells had looked so _harmless._ Beautiful, really. One that he'd splintered apart himself had come to pieces in what looked like an explosion of….

Alistair blinked suddenly, and looked again at what Amell was doing.

_Oh,_ he thought.

She was whispering as she worked, too quietly to hear. She was so fixed on her solitary task that she didn't seem to have noticed him at all. She just kept staring upward, seemingly marking out spots against the darkness. Alistair strained to pick out words, and at last caught a few. _Dumat,_ he thought he heard, somewhat worryingly. Then: _cradle._ It didn't make any sense at all, unless….

Cautiously, Alistair took a step forward.

"Rose of Andraste," he heard. Amell's fingers traced out a shape, then moved. Two fingers tapped out spots, then made a trailing line between. "The Sword…."

Alistair was trying to move quietly, but at that moment he kicked a loose stone. Amell froze, her eyes darting his direction. Above her, indistinct light wavered.

"I'm… sorry," he said, making as if to turn away. "I didn't mean-"

Amell didn't move, but her eyes seemed… entreating, almost. Alistair wondered for a mad second if she were weaving some sort of entrapment spell, but that was only old lectures from Brother Burke again - mad indeed, he realized now. Mages - or at least this mage - just weren't _like_ that. All at once he wanted to apologize, not just for interrupting but everything he'd ever been taught. Everything he was. Everything he'd dragged her into.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," he finished lamely. "I should go."

Amell looked into the ceiling again. Her hand lowered. Strangely enough, she wasn't agreeing with him. Alistair wavered, feeling as if he ought to do something more. And since he suddenly didn't _want_ to go, he heard himself asking a question instead:

"What are you doing?" he said.

A faint smile crossed her lips. Alistair found himself looking more closely at _her_ now, instead of just her hands, and he realized for the first time that she actually had very nice lips. His cheeks flushed. _Attracted to a mage,_ he thought, noting the spill of her honey-blonde hair and the glint of her eyes under the spell's light. _Oh, this will end well._

She still hadn't answered, though, and he was about to call it hopeless and leave after all when she finally said, "You can see it from here, if you sit by me."

Alistair considered himself, still dressed in clanking splintmail. It was, he had to admit, a little awkward. Amell, on the other hand - _Solona,_ he reminded himself, lingering over her given name in his mind - was dressed in mage robes that clung to her curves before spilling out around her small feet. No heavy armored boots there, only soft leather with strange embroidery stitched around the edges. Spells again, he thought. As if she needed any extra enchantments to… well… be enchanting.

He coughed. Solona smiled again, but he noticed suddenly how tremulous the expression was. She looked, in fact, as if she were on the verge of tears.

Feeling abruptly _very_ foolish, and as if he'd missed the point, and that he had to say _something_ now, Alistair walked forward and eased himself down next to her. "What is it?"

She met his eyes a moment. He saw how startlingly green they were, and had to catch his breath. "It's something I… used to do, back at the Tower," she said. "We only had little narrow windows, and sometimes - especially if we were being punished - we didn't even have those." She shivered. "Being trapped again like this… all this stone around us…."

Alistair wanted, quite suddenly, to reach for her hand, but he didn't dare move.

"I wanted to see them again," Solona whispered.

Alistair followed her gaze into the haze of light she'd been spinning, and held his breath as she breathed out a final word. The patterns shimmered into place, resolving into the shapes she'd been naming, one by one by one.

Constellations.

Alistair made a soft exclamation of amazement. The whole sky spread out above them, with hundreds - maybe even thousands - of stars replicated in sparks of floating light. Alistair reached out a hand. Solona's magic tingled against his skin; the stars didn't waver when he touched them, but in fact only grew brighter.

"I thought I heard you naming them," he whispered. "How did - how did you…."

"It's just light," she said. "Just tiny specks of fire."

Alistair, his finger brushing against the brighest, warmest star in Dumat's Eye, turned to look at her again.

He knew a little something of magic, of course. He certainly knew the theory. Primal spells, of which fire was one, were theoretically easier - or at least less subtle - than some of the other branches of magic. But throwing fireballs around in a fit of anger or the heat of battle was one thing. Applying fire like _this…_.

_Beware the subtle spells,_ Brother Nichol had told them once, during a lecture on defensive techniques. _Small craftings may seem unremarkable, easy to handle, but they can be misleading. Subtle weavings require immense control, and are the sign of a deeply skilled mage. Perhaps even an… influenced mage. Be wary, for you don't know how or where such a spell might turn against you._

Alistair shook his head. _Thousands of tiny points of fire, all controlled at once,_ he thought, more awed than alarmed. _She's maintaining exact patterns, _complicated_ patterns, and she doesn't even look tired. Just…._

Solona sighed, and leaned her head against folded knees.

_Just… unhappy,_ he thought. _Hurt. Lost._

The idea made his heart twist. He didn't know her well at all, but he knew to the marrow of his bones that he didn't want her to feel that way, lectures from humorless old templars be damned.

He lowered his hand. "They're beautiful," he said of her conjured stars, and meant it.

Solona was still staring into the glimmering display.

"I had to learn them one little slice at a time, through the Tower windows," she said. "And from books, and old stories. And what memories I had from before joining the Circle. I'd been there so long." She pulled in a long breath. "I know we have to go back there, for the treaties. Of course we must. But I _couldn't_, Alistair." The sound of his name on her lips held him utterly captivated; the gleam of tears in her eyes made it hard to breathe. "I couldn't go back there so soon. It would be too much. Too strange. But why I thought this place would be better…." She shuddered. "One more place without stars. What was I thinking?"

This time, Alistair gave in. He reached for her hand, folding his fingers carefully over hers. Solona tensed, startled, but she didn't move away.

"We'll be done here soon enough," he said, trying to sound reassuring. The warmth of her skin against his was distracting enough that his voice wavered anyway. "We'll be done, and we'll go. Maybe we'll find the Dalish next. Forests. Think of it."

He dared to let his thumb rub back and forth in a soft little gesture - just once or twice before he stopped, but it was enough to bring Solona's attention directly back to him. There was a breathless moment before she spoke; when she did, her smile looked wry.

"I can't even imagine forests in here," she said. "Everything's so hard and unforgiving. Ancient. Deep…." She shivered again. "And we're meant to die here."

"We _won't_-"

"Maybe not yet," she said distantly. "But that's what Wardens do, isn't it? You told me so yourself. Venturing into the Deep Roads to meet our end. Dying without even the stars to light our way."

The words - and worse, the idea that she'd been dwelling over that so much, without saying anything - hit him hard. _I shouldn't have told her,_ Alistair thought wretchedly. _All these burdens on her already, and I had to tell her _that_ part of being a Warden. What was _I_ thinking?_

Then another voice in his head spoke up. Fortunately it wasn't a remembered templar this time, but a much better, wiser mentor, unyielding yet sympathetic. _You had to,_ the voice said. _It was right for her to know, and she wouldn't have thanked you for hiding it._

Alistair pictured Duncan, then sighed as the image faded away. He was right - and he was gone. Alistair did have to tell her these things. There wasn't anyone else.

He sighed, and softened it as best he could.

"Good thing you can light your own stars, then," Alistair said, trying on a little smile of his own. "You can dazzle the darkspawn while you're at it. They'll never see it coming."

Solona's own smile flickered back.

"And I promise," Alistair said, his voice lowering. "I promise you won't go alone."

Her answer sounded sad. "You _can't_ promise that, Alistair. You don't know."

He squeezed her hand. The gesture made his own heart skip - and from the look on her face, it must have done the same to her - but he tried to keep his voice light regardless. "Come on," he said. "Believe it. A little deluded optimism is good for the soul."

She almost, to his deepest relief, laughed. Then she looked up again.

Above them, the stars still shone. Alistair picked out a few constellations that he knew, like the Ladle, off to the west, and the Griffon up above. That was one he always remembered, especially since becoming a Warden. But some of the others… he had to admit Solona knew them better than he. The thought made him feel guilty. All those nights he'd stared up at the stars and dreamed of running away to chase them all down, but he'd never even bothered to learn what they were called….

All he _had_ learned was how to dispel that beautiful display above him with a thought and a grimace and a wave of his hand.

He shook his head. "Time to start over," he murmured. Solona gave him a sideways glance. He decided not to explain. Instead, he stretched out one finger and touched the nearest speck of warmth.

"Could you teach me their names?" he asked.

Solona was silent a moment, seemingly nonplussed by the request. Then something in her shifted. "It'll take some time," she said at last.

"It's all right." He gave her a more honest smile. "I'm not going anywhere."

She thought about that, too. Then she turned the hand he still held until she could interlace her fingers with his.

"All right," she said, making his heart skip again. And he listened, letting the words wash over him and teach him something new - something bright enough to make him believe that they _had_ to make it out of this to see the real ones together.

For now, sharing this little bit of magic was more than enough.


End file.
